 ah Monday morning coffee in my new mini mug life is good don't let anyone tell you otherwise even if he is a professor of psychology like me and the author of my Lignan self-love narcissism revisited today we're going to discuss the question why can't you grow up why can't he grow up and of course why can't she grow up why do people remain in a state of perpetual childhood unable to assume adult chores adult responsibilities at an adult outlook on life and adult life plan what's happening why are we all ensconced in our cocoons playing video games watching Netflix and tending to our pets instead of getting out there doing things having relationships having children propagating the species and doing other pleasurable things why is all of humanity fixated in a state of perpetual puberty this is me some back mean and my mini mug about to reveal to you the mysteries of the universe of eternal childhood that was good okay shoshone here's the thing I propose a new clinical entity every Monday and every Wednesday I propose a new clinical entity and some of them actually take hold cold empathy inverted narcissism etc etc have taken somatic narcissists cerebral narcissists they're all my inventions and they're all out there in the wild so here I am again having just coined that the new diagnosis covert borderline and now I'm proposing a new clinical entity not know psychology precocious adulthood syndrome PRAS precocious adulthood adulthood syndrome you've heard it here first for short we can call it adultification adultification in people who were forced into adult roles in their childhood or their adolescence adultification precocious adulthood syndrome is brought on via three vectors there are three cases the etiology the reason the causation the three cases in which children become reluctant however reluctantly however forcibly they be big they're forced to become adults the first case is chronic illness chronic illness including mental illness of either the parent or of the child both cases the child has to grow up and mature anyone who has been to a cancer ward of children knows what I'm talking about anyone who has witnessed a child with anxiety disorders contact disorder depression knows what I'm talking about these children have progeria they are like decades older than they should be their chronological age doesn't match their emotional or mental or psychological age they are much older so chronic illness the second vector is sexual abuse in early childhood to early puberty the more egregious the sexual abuse the more intimate the child is with an authority figure a role model or a parent the more likely the child is to become adultified children forced into sexual roles early adolescence prepubescent children forced into sexual acts with an adult especially with a meaningful or significant adult they grow up they mature they age they become much older within within a year and the third reason for adult adultification is parentifying or instrumentalizing the child I want to dwell on this a bit because it's much more common actually than sexual abuse parentifying or adultifying is when a child is coerced by caregivers into assuming adult develop mentally inappropriate roles as for example a surrogate parent to siblings a referee between his parents or a caregiver for a mentally or physically disabled parent these roles are adult roles and when they are when the child is coerced and shoehorned into these roles he or she grows up and very fast much faster than than they should skipping in effect childhood and adolescence I mentioned parentifying or instrumentalizing instrumentalizing is when the child is used as an extension of the parent as a tool as an instrument mainly to realize the unfulfilled wishes and fantasies of the parental figure so these children are forced to become I don't know pianists or doctors or whatever they are given they're handed their careers and their opinions they are molded into a reflection of the parents frustrations broken dreams and shattered hopes the child who should mend fix the parent save the parent by becoming that which the parent had failed to become because of circumstances or because of lack of ability limitations the child emulates his parents and their mental issues as the child assumes parental roles child becomes a replica clone of the parental figures very often the parents of parentified children in Andrei Green's term are dead mothers not dead in the physical sense but absent depressed self-centered disempathic capricious dangerous instrumentalizing or abusive the child is therefore forced to parent itself by internalizing his parents disorders dysfunctional attachment styles and trauma bonding when these children become adults they regulate their sense of self-worth by caring for other people later in life precocious adulthood syndrome PRAS leads to compensatory infantilism known also as the Peter Pan syndrome coupled with imposter syndrome now the Peter Pan syndrome simply means a person who is an adult rejects or undermines adult roles chores and responsibilities does not have an adult lifestyle avoids acquiring adult skills avoids establishing a family driving a car even drinking it's a person who remains fixated or stuck in perpetual childlike state childish state actually and so these people go through life regarding themselves as babies infants they affect pseudo stupidity naivete or naivety which is unbefeating an adult they're not a set they're not actually gullible the pretty paranoid because they know that they are babes in the woods they know that they are in danger or risking themselves they know that they are being reckless by pretending to be children in an adult environment so they are actually hyper vigilant and suspicious and paranoid but they subject themselves they place themselves in situations where they fulfill this submissive receiving role they are the children in need of care special treatment concessions so this is the infantilizing element compensatory infantilism Peter Pan syndrome but this is coupled with an imposter syndrome the feeling the knowing feeling that you're faking it and you're not making it you're just faking it you appear to be a successful businessman a great caring doctor or pastor or a husband or a father but it's all an act you're play acting you're pretending you are imitating and emulating you are you don't feel one with the roles that you are playing this is the imposter syndrome the belief that somehow you are succeeding to pull the wool over people's eyes you're succeeding to deceive most people and that the day of reckoning the day of judgment is at hand suddenly people will expose you for who you are and your fraudulent stratogens will be unearthed and revealed to great public humiliation this is the imposter syndrome some of the studies for example there's a systematic review of 62 studies published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine in December 2019 some of the studies indicated up to 82% of individuals currently in today's world experience imposter like feelings in other words up to 82% of individuals are actually infantilizing they don't feel like adults this is not an epidemic this is a global pandemic far outweighing covid together with narcissism and psychopathy dark personalities Machiavellianism manipulativeness I mean if you put all this together with infantilism you see where we are going as a species adultified children grow up feeling responsible for everyone around them they are incapable of having fun they never they've never had a child they didn't acquire the skills of having fun of relaxing adultified children become control freaks they are self-reliant they trust no one and always get involved in conflicts as orbiters or peacemakers so there are two two possible reactions to precocious adulthood syndrome PRAS two possible react one is infantilizing and imposter syndrome and the other one is adultifying or adultification so when the child is treated as an adult when the child is parentified is to mentalized abused etc etc that child has two strategic choices two possible coping mechanisms one is to remain fixated in that state as a child and to engage in repetition compulsion and attempt to resolve early childhood conflicts by repeating them with for example intimate partners infantilization coupled with an imposter syndrome that's one strategic solution and the other strategic solution is to become actually a parent figure for life so as I said this second solution involves growing up feeling responsible for everyone being incapable of having fun being a control freak being self-reliant as an ideology trusting no one I being hyper-vision always getting involved in conflicts as orbiters or peacemakers this second solution adultified children they always feel that they need to be good worthy trustworthy reliable strong even the expense of their own needs they are in other words self-sacrificial they always feel either that their efforts are not appreciated or that they should do more and consequently some of these children turned adults end up being passive aggressive negativistic or even covert narcissists or quote unquote empaths which is just another label for covert narcissists adultified children resemble borderlines in that they engage in compensatory behaviors that are not calibrated and not proportionate so adult children are likely to engage in reckless rampant promiscuity and substance abuse some of them some of these people end up being codependent people pleases and highly sensitive people HSPs so this is the terrain this is the landscape when you adultify a child as a parent you're giving the child you're leaving the child only two options either to conform and to become an adult for life to become a caregiver for life or to refuse to become an adult also for life the child can reject your attempt to adultify him or her and then he or she remain remains a child a lot lifelong child Peter Pan or the child can adopt the role willingly because there are some kinds of emotional or even sometimes financial rewards so he the child adopts the role of taking care of the parent realizing the parents dreams having sex with the parent whatever it takes and this kind of child remains in fixated in the position of a caregiver and a controller and the parent fear parent figure for everyone around ironically there is a kind of synergy between these two types adultify children tend to be attracted to each other the adult if I child who had become a mother figure takes care of the adult if I child who had chosen to remain an infant and this is at the core of the shared fantasy of the narcissist why it is such a successful strategy the narcissist is an adultified child an erstwhile adultified child who had chosen to remain an infant who had chosen to never grow up who had chosen to be a sempitonal Peter Pan and then this adultified child who is an infant goes around looking for a mommy a mother and he finds another adultified child who had become a mother for life who is incapable of being anything but a mother and they team up together they establish a family a fantastic family a shared fantasy within which they cater to each other's psychological needs the narcissist lets his surrogate substitute mother mother him and the mother has found the perfect object or the perfect subject for mothering in her narcissistic intimate part I hope you had as much fun as I did I strongly recommend buying a mini cup mini mug that's a solution to all of life's problems trust me and then drink from her in every way possible grow up